Paul Glabicki

Paul Glabicki's career and creative work have been characterized by highly interdisciplinary activity centered in painting, drawing, and filmmaking, and extending into photography, installation art, video art, sound, and electronic media. His educational background includes a B.F.A. in Painting from Carnegie Mellon University, and two M.F.A. degrees (Painting, Filmmaking) at Ohio University. His exhibition career has included major film festivals, numerous individual and group screenings, national / international museum and gallery exhibitions. He has also taught and lectured as a visiting artist at institutions throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan.

Much of his work has been involved with issues of time, motion (actual or implied), temporal experience, perception, analytical observation, thresholds of figurative and abstract representation, language systems and semiotics, methods of analysis and interpretation, and transformation of found images or actual sites. Recent work presented an interest in cross-cultural juxtaposition and experimental composition through use of new technology (stereo image projection of virtual environments, computer animation, computer tapes for multiple monitors/projection, and sound). The body of his experimental animation work for film synthesized drawing and painting processes with sound, optical light play, cinematic form, and simultaneous relay of multiple layers of information. These films were carefully crafted by means of thousands of hand-drawn images on paper - each drawing representing both a frame of film and a unique complete work on paper. The film works have been widely screened at such diverse international sites as the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, the Cannes Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of Art in New York (Whitney Biennial), the Venice Biennale, the Image Forum in Tokyo, the Hirshorn Museum in Washington, the Mostra Internazionale Del Nuovo Cinema in Pesaro, Italy, The Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal, and the Holland Film Festival. The films, and original artwork, are included in the archives and collections of the IOTA Center, Los Angeles; the International Animation Library of Japan; the ASIFA Animation Archive in Berlin; the Anthology Film Archives, New York, and in numerous museums and private collections. Original 16mm negatives are housed and awaiting restoration at the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences vaults in Los Angeles, under the supervision of the iotaCenter.

His interests and studio environment have promoted dialogues and involvement with diverse media, with each medium informing, sharing, or modifying the development of new works. Projects have explored sequential images, narrative, and pure abstraction. Much of the work originated from on site documentation, observation and personal travel journals, memory, and literary sources (the 1989 experimental animated film UNDER THE SEA was structured on adapted fragments of five literary classics which often appeared on the screen simultaneously via multiple languages, text, sound, voice performances by actors, and visual clues and references). In 1990, this work led to experiments with installation pieces, which extended the work from 2-dimensional form into 3-dimensional space. Among the major installations were "THIS IS/JUST THAT" created at Pittsburgh's acclaimed installation museum, the Mattress Factory, in 1990; "EAST WEST/WEST EAST" at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 1991-92; and "MEMORY SPACES" at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Cincinnati in 1995. Other installations and exhibitions of film, video, and painting/drawing/photography were presented at one-man or group exhibitions at such sites as the Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles Film Forum; the 1987 Whitney Biennial; the American Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, NY; the American Film institute; Brooklyn College; Deson/Saunders Gallery, Chicago; the Chicago International Film Festival; the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna; Itoki Gallery, Hiroshima; Cinematograph-Filmverleih, Innsbruck; the Bombay International Film Festival; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Goethe House: New York; the Fundacio Antoni Tapies, Barcelona; CENTRAL ARTS, Tucson, Arizona; and the International Animation Festival of Japan: Hiroshima.

During the 1990s his work progressively focused on use of new technology. His handmade film animation evolved into computer animation during this period, with initial motion painting/cyclical compositions (the video works: "COMPUTER ANIMATION STUDIES: 1990-92"). In this work, animation was presented outside the context of the screening room or theater, through continuous use of motion images on multiple computer or video monitors in large gallery spaces. From 1992 to 1996 the work evolved into computer-generated artificial environments for 3-D Stereo projection. This work began with the "MEMORY SPACE" project in which complex environments were digitally constructed from memories of actual sites visited throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. These spaces were virtual dioramas projected on to large screens, and presented vivid environments and architectural detail that merged culturally divergent locations (Venice/Kyoto, Vienna/Nara, Venice/Vienna, etc.). The computer modeling and construction processes also resulted in new works on canvas and paper: the "Displacement Series." This series of large, handmade works merged computer texture-mapping concepts with acrylic painting, drawing, Zen gardens, and rhythmic mark-making on canvas.

From 1997 to 2002, Glabicki's work focused on drawing and computer animation work for multiple video monitor installations. The 1997-98 work DARK ROOM/SIMPLE ROOF was a silent 60-minute, experiment in rhythmic abstract form enclosed within an unseen, off-screen architectural enclosure. RED FENCE (1999) was an elaborate suite of short theatrical acts in which objects and images overlay and juxtapose East and West images, artifacts, and sound. RED FENCE has been recognized as an innovative "feature film," and as a significant work of "new media" (presented in January, 2000 at ART IN MOTION, an international festival of time-based media at the University of Southern California). It was also selected for the Global Multimedia Interface, a project of the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool. The body of this interdisciplinary work over the last 25 years has resulted in numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, and several grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

The computer animation piece FULL MOON (2001) premiered as a multi-video projection installation at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, where Glabicki was honored as "Artist of the Year." Glabicki recently collaborated with internationally acclaimed sound artist Paul Miller (DJ SPOOKY), who created a sound /image remix performance piece incorporating clips of Glabicki's body of work (REBIRTH OF A NATION, Lincoln Center, New York, 2004). In August 2002, Glabicki's animation was included in a special installation project entitled "Animation and Meditation," an installation of computer animation on video (within a traditional Japanese meeting room) in collaboration with Japanese masters of the traditional tea ceremony, at HIROSHIMA 2002. Since 2002, he has been focused on new drawing works exploring time, memory, language, and "meaningful coincidence." His recent "ACCOUNTING FOR" drawing series as been exhibited in solo and group shows at Kim Foster Gallery, New York City.

http://paulglabickiarts.com/